


MOONSHOT

by asianellenpage



Category: 2NE1, BLACKPINK (Band), Big Bang (Band), EXO (Band), Lee Hi (Musician)
Genre: Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8293894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asianellenpage/pseuds/asianellenpage
Summary: Twenty years ago, a Terran had been impregnated by the carefree King Ji-Yong of the Milky Way Galaxy. Without telling a soul goodbye or of her whereabouts, a pregnant Chae-Rin leaves Earth without telling Ji-Yong that she is with child. The clueless Ji-Yong continues to rule the Milky Way Galaxy with reckless abandon with his advisers  Seung-Hyun, Daesung, Youngbae, and Seung-Ri. But twenty years is a long time -- time is running out for Ji-Yong and his mortality, he is getting too old to be stressed over ruling an entire galaxy. Coupled with the looming threat of the  EXO -- the ruling empire of another galaxy -- planning to take over the Milky Way when Ji-Yong is the most vulnerable, no one will be able to lead the galaxy... Except...





	1. Prologue: 아직은 잘 모르잖아요

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for mentions of alcohol, sex, and war violence.
> 
> Also cross-posted on Asian Fanfics: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/1183627 
> 
> Title taken from YG Entertainment's own makeup brand Moonshot
> 
> inspired by and taken reference from the music videos of the following songs:  
> Bae Bae by BIGBANG, Whistle by BLACKPINK, BOOMBAYAH by BLACKPINK, Let's Not Fall in Love by BIGBANG, MAMA by EXO, Come Back Home by 2NE1
> 
> Also inspired heavily by Voltron: Legendary Defender. (I guess you could say it's a Voltron AU with YG Family?)

"Boo!" someone whispers in Chae-Rin's ear. She jolts. She turns around to see the source of the sound, hand clenching into a fist when she sees who it is, and swiftly bows.

"Your highness!" she exclaims breathily. The person smirks, putting a hand under her chin to lift her up to his level, making her meet his eyes.

"How many times do I have to tell you," he says in a husky voice, breath fanning across her face, "call me Ji-Yong when it's just us."

"But-"  
"Chae-Rin." Ji-Yong says firmly.

Chae-Rin stares back into his eyes without hesitation, a small nod against his hand. He gives her a small smile.

"Ji-Yong-ah," she says in a soft voice, a proud smile emitting on her face that it reaches her eyes. Ji-Yong chuckles.

"Well done, Princess."

Chae-Rin squeals, and hits Ji-Yong on the chest softly. "Don't say that!" She avoids his eyes. Ji-Yong follows her gaze cheekily, trying to regain eye contact.

"And why not, Princess?"

Chae-Rin rolls her eyes, but the pink dusting her cheeks are a bright contrast to what she is conveying. "I'm not a princess."

"Yet."

Chae-Rin tries not to smile even wider at that, but it's so difficult. Why did Ji-Yong have to be such a smooth talker?  
"Not with all those other girls you said the same thing to," she jokes.

Ji-Yong rolls his eyes, but he doesn't pull away for even a second. "Because they're not you."

Chae-Rin looks at Ji-Yong's lips. "I like you better when you're honest."

Ji-Yong chortles again, "and I like you better if you were submissive."  
"I think we both established I'm not that, _Ji-Yong_."  
"Of course you aren't, baby."

Chae-Rin ignores the pet name Ji-Yong addresses her by. Ji-Yong brushes his hand against the back of hers, and subtly takes it. "But that's just how I like you."

Chae-Rin shakes her head in amusement, "I'm not meat, Ji-Yong."

"Of course you aren't, baby," he repeats, "you're a beautiful, seductive and sexy woman."

"Glad to know you only like me for how I look," she says sarcastically.

"Oh no, not at all, baby," there goes that nickname again. "You're so much more than that."

"Really?"  
"Of course."  
"Tell me."

Ji-Yong grabs Chae-Rin by the hand and turns her around, her back pressed against his front. He winds his long, lanky arms around her waist and rests his chin on her left shoulder.

"You're intelligent, and clever, and brave, and quick-witted," he enumerates very slowly, starting for them a little sway from side to side. Chae-Rin places her hands over his arms around her stomach, trying to ease his grip on her.

He musn't know.

"Hmm... Keep going," she closes her eyes and leans her back on him. "I like hearing you praise me."

"Of course you would, baby," he says in that same husky voice again, this time directly into her ear, before taking the lobe between his teeth and licking it. "But I would rather if I just showed you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATIONS:  
> 아직은 잘 모르잖아요 -- from let's not fall in love by big bang; "we don't know each other very well"
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr sq-1, or twitter @asianellenpage :D


	2. 찹쌀떡

_"넌 항상 그래. 이기적인 새끼."_  
Ji-Yong jolts awake.

* * *

 

Ji-Yong makes his way down to the dining room clad in a fluffy white robe, yawning with eyes closed and dragging his feet along the carpet.

"Good morning, Your Highness," a female voice greets him, opening the very first chair on the fancy wooden table. "We will bring out your breakfast right now."

Ji-Yong only waves his hand to dismiss the servant.

"Good morning, hyung," a youthful voice greets. Ji-Yong opens one eye at the source of the voice. It was Seung-Ri, a spoonful of mango on the way to his mouth. He grunts at him.

"You alright?"  
Another grunt.  
"Had that dream again, didn't you?"

Ji-Yong opens one eye at him again. "How do you know?"

Seung-Ri chuckles. "You're getting quite easy to read, you know."

"That's rude."  
"You're rude," Seung-Ri retorts, "sleeping on the dining table like that."

"This is my castle, I can do whatever I want," Ji-Yong sneers. 

Seung-Ri puts his spoon down, and it clatters against the porcelain plate.

"Seriously, hyung, we need to get that checked," he begins, "the same recurring dream for fifteen years--"

Someone comes in to the dining room with a cart of food. Seung-Ri falls silent, observing the movements of the servant placing breakfast before Ji-Yong. Once the servant leaves with Ji-Yong's food fully ready laid out on the table, Seung-Ri heaves a large breath to continue speaking, but Ji-Yong only holds up a hand to halt him.

"I know, okay, I know." Ji-Yong says.

"I'm just saying, hyung," replies Seung-Ri. "That's really fishy. For fifteen years you had the same dream--"

Just then, someone else comes in: a muscular man with a circular face covered with a pair of large sunglasses. He sits himself down beside Ji-Yong, across Seung-Ri. "Mornin'."

"Mornin'," Ji-Yong responds, lackluster as he lazily cuts his omelette.  
"Good morning, Youngbae hyung." Seung-Ri greets at the same time.

Youngbae takes the table napkin folded before him and opens it up, placing it over his lap. "What were you guys talking about? Something about a dream?"

Seung-Ri glances at Ji-Yong before turning back to Youngbae. "It's the same dream again."

"Again?" Youngbae rests his wrists on the edge of the table. "Ji-Yong, really, you need to get that checked, you've been having that dream for--"

Another servant comes in and this time greets Youngbae. The three fall silent as the servant tells Youngbae his breakfast will be coming now. She leaves again, and the two men on either side of the table look at their half-asleep king slowly chewing the food in his mouth.

"For fifteen years, Ji-Yong," Youngbae continues, like he has not been interrupted. "There's bound to be something fishy about a dream of a girl's voice telling you you're a selfish bastard."

Seung-Ri snickers into his glass of orange juice.

"Do you even know who the voice is?" Youngbae asks.  
"Yeah!" Seung-Ri slams his glass on the table, "does she sound familiar to you?"

"I told you guys," Ji-Yong drawls, "I don't know who she is. I've never heard her voice in my life."

Seung-Ri side eyes Youngbae. "Are you sure?"  
"Yeah, are you sure? Maybe they're from one of your flings."

Ji-Yong gives Youngbae a blank look. "I haven't hooked up with that many girls to not remember their voices, Youngbae; I would know how they sound like. This girl doesn't sound like any of them."

"Then who is she and why has she been calling you a selfish bastard for twenty years?"   
"I don't know!"

The topic is dropped once Youngbae's food arrives. 

"So," Seung-Ri leans over the table, "what are the plans for the day?"

* * *

  
The music is so loud.

In a secluded booth of the club sits Ji-Yong with a glass of rum in one hand and another on a girl's exposed shoulder. She smiles bashfully at him as she feels the back of his hand on her skin. He smiles back drunkenly.

"Glad to know that even with the threat of liver cirrhosis you still want to drink your blood into alcohol," a voice yells over the music. Ji-Yong looks up to see Youngbae in a cowboy hat he has never seen him wear in all the twenty-two years he knew Youngbae. Arm candy is draped over Youngbae's arm in the form of a dirty blonde white girl with large and light blue-colored eyes. 

"Who's your friend?" Ji-Yong asks, trying to distract him.  
Youngbae smiles from ear to ear, "dunno."

Ji-Yong makes a 'tch' sound before tossing the rest of the rum at Youngbae, who barely dodges with a laugh.   
He turns to the girl, "what's your name?"

"Selene," she replies.  
"If he treats you shit," Ji-Yong motions to the still-beaming Youngbae beside her, "let me know. Put it in writing. I'll fuck him up."

The girl graces him with a small smile, then looks at Youngbae who starts to speak.  
"'Treat her shit'?" he cries, incredulous. He scoffs. "If you would excuse me, you bastard," he declares, although it lacks venom, "I'm going to take her horseback-riding because she's never tried before."

Ji-Yong doesn't care. "Be careful."

Youngbae only rolls his eyes, and drags the girl away.

The club music suddenly stops. A microphone's feedback reverberates through the venue instead. Youngbae and the girl freeze in their ways, and Ji-Yong seems slightly awake at the silence.

"Sorry, we would like to acknowledge the presence of one of the Royal Advisers who have come to join us tonight -- Choi Seung-Hyun-ssi!" the DJ said, voice thin and laced with nerves. He's probably new.

With practiced ease, Seung-Hyun parts the crowd in the middle of the dance floor, his cane and dress shoes clacking against the club's floorboards. He stops just in front of the DJ and smirks, waving his hand to motion for him to continue the music.

The music plays again like they weren't interrupted, and the people's hype seemed to build up even more. They danced as Seung-Hyun walks through the hordes of people, they themselves pushing each other away to give Seung-Hyun a path to walk on without having to touch any of their sweaty bodies. One girl with short purple hair fearlessly shoves himself into Seung-Hyun and his expensive formal set of a metallic purple suit and pants, a bright blue shirt underneath, and a bright yellow tie. Seung-Hyun looks at her with steel cold eyes that would have made her run away, but Seung-Hyun slips a hand around her bum and holds her tightly against him.

Seung-Hyun stops in front of Ji-Yong's table. "So what's this I hear about a dream?"

Ji-Yong rolls his eyes, "it's the same thing."  
"Oh?" Seung-Hyun raises his brow. That's a thing with Seung-Hyun, Ji-Yong recalls, even if he knows the story, he will still pretend he has no idea to the person who perpetrated it. This makes Seung-Hyun a good lawyer. Ji-Yong muses about how he found such an intelligent and well-put-together man. 

Seung-Hyun takes a seat on the booth, making the girl draping himself over Ji-Yong scoot closer to the king. The purple-haired girl with Seung-Hyun places herself on Seung-Hyun's lap. "Same dream about a girl's voice telling you you're a selfish bastard?" Seung-Hyun's hands travel to the girl's thighs.

"Exact one," Ji-Yong affirms, taking a sip from his rum glass.

"You sure you don't want that to get checked?" Seung-Hyun looks straight at Ji-Yong, whose eyes were half-closed due to the alcohol.  
"No." His answer is firm and short. 

Seung-Hyun sighs. "And why not?"   
Ji-Yong leans forward, placing his elbows on either of his knees, "because it might predict my death."

* * *

  
Ji-Yong was right.

"Yep," Daesung pouts in understanding, flipping one of the cards set out on Ha-Yi's table with one hand, another under the table combing the hair of the girl on his lap. "Totally accurate. You will die in like, a few years."

"Way to be frank, Daesung," Ji-Yong huffs. "Does it say how long I have?"

"Like, two or three years," Ha-Yi pops up from behind the four other cards she held in front of her face, trying to make sense of the results. There's a small whine from below the table, and Ha-Yi looks away in disgust, focusing her vision to the front at the king.

"Alright," Ji-Yong waves his arms once, "you're saying that in the first card, a war will break out."  
"Yep," Daesung nods.  
"And in the second card, I will die."  
"Yep."  
"But not from the war."  
"Nope."  
"Just my cirrhosis worsening."  
"Yep-- look, this is why I don't want you here," Daesung explains. "I don't want you finding out shit then deciding to avoid the inevitable; you're going to die other way."

Ji-Yong does not answer. 

Ha-Yi gasps beside Daesung, pulling out the third card from the fan she made of them. She places the card on the table. "It says here you don't have to worry."

"Why not?" Ji-Yong demands, "I'm already dying, anyway!"

Ha-Yi shakes her head in amusement, but also disapproval. "It says here there is someone out there -- You need twenty-one cards to win at blackjack, but within that stack there is an ace."

Ji-Yong furrows his brows together. "An ace?"

Ha-Yi nods, "an ace within the stack of twenty-one, ensuring a surefire win at blackjack."

Daesung looks at her strangely, "what the hell are you talking about, that's not true!"  
"It is!"  
"An ace has two numbers, one or eleven -- if you take it as eleven and your deck goes over twenty-one it would be a bust!"

"Exactly!" Ha-Yi groans, "don't you see?"  
"See what?" Daesung all but yells. The girl on Daesung's lap almost growls.

"You gotta take it slow." Ha-Yi ignores the girl and looks straight at Ji-Yong.

Ji-Yong tilts his head slightly, a wordless signal to tell her to explain. He is listening.

"The ace in the stack is a very strong-willed person, just like how an ace has a strong power in blackjack. You have to check your circumstances first to see if it's appropriate that you treat an ace as a 'one' or an 'eleven'."

Daesung seems to get it. "If the circumstances are in your favor, treating the ace as a 'one' will make the process of fighting slow, but ensures your win without much damage."  
"Exactly," Ha-Yi cuts in, "and if the circumstances aren't in your favor but you treat the ace as an 'eleven', it will think you are reckless and stupid and not worthy of respect for pushing them to their limit and eventually failing."

"But I'm the king--" Ji-Yong tries to argue. That makes no sense, who would disrespect him? He means to say that people might dislike him and how rules the Milky Way empire, but they can't disrespect him, surely. He's the king! It's practically law.

"The ace doesn't recognize that," Ha-Yi explains. "It views you as just a card. If you earn its respect by playing them right and using them to your advantage to win against the war, it will respect you all the way till the minute of your death. Then they assume position."

Earn its respect?  
Play them right?  
Death?  
Assume position?

Ji-Yong has never in his entire life showed respect to the people who did not respect him. So even if this ace would help him win whatever war --  hopefully the war against liver cirrhosis -- Ha-Yi is talking about, it would not be worth sacrificing whatever pride he still had.

"What do you mean 'assume position'?" 

Ha-Yi and Daesung look at each other.

"It means," Ha-Yi sighs, "that when you die, they'll rule the Galaxy."

* * *

  
Seung-Ri opens the door. "What," he demands blandly.

Ji-Yong glares at him once he sees the thick white smoke behind Seung-Ri. "What are you doing?"

Seung-Ri rolls his eyes, "getting high, obviously." He presses a hand to his eyes, rubbing them. His eyes are a slight red.

"Well, clear that out!" Ji-Yong orders, "I need to talk to you."

Seung-Ri groans. "Can it wait? I'm in the middle of something here."

Ji-Yong glares at him again. "There's a girl in there, isn't there?"  
"So what if there is-- oi!"

Ji-Yong pushes past Seung-Ri and goes into the room, navigating himself through the thick smoke that clouded Seung-Ri's quarters. He finds a scantily-clad lady with short platinum white hair. He looks at her sternly, before pointing behind his shoulder with his thumb. "Out."

"What, hyung, no!" Seung-Ri protests behind him.  
"Hyung yes," Ji-Yong snaps, and turns back to the lady, "get up, get dressed, get out."

The woman scowls at him and rummages through the floor to find her clothes. She walks past Seung-Ri, rolling her eyes at him as she says, "I knew you and the king had something going on." 

Seung-Ri splutters. "What, no, that's not true! Ji-Yong hyung, tell her it's not true!"   
A mischievous smirk decorates Ji-Yong's face. "When you're the lonely unmarried king of the galaxy, it's hard to be picky." He winks at the lady, making her scoff and walk out haughtily.

Seung-Ri wails.

"Hyung, why?" he cries, visibly upset. Ji-Yong pays him no mind as he rushes around the room, trying to find the source of the smoke to turn it off.

"Turn that thing off!" yells Ji-Yong. "Turn it off, I need to speak with all of you."

"About what?"

A loud explosion answers Seung-Ri's question.

The two men rush to the nearest window to look at where the sound came from: a large bright orange fire quite a distance from the palace, releasing giant puffs of black smoke into the air. 

"That."

* * *

  
The projector glows a bright blue in the throne room, where Ji-Yong was sat in the middle with his crown haphazardly put on. His advisers were stood on his right side, hands behind their backs as they looked at the men on the other side of the projector's line.

"King Ji-Yong." The middle one of them calls.  
Ji-Yong raises a brow at them in recognition. "Luhan," he acknowledges, "Kris, Tao."  
("The EXO," Daesung whispers to himself.)

"What brings you here to Milky Way?"

"We come to deliver a message," Luhan grins in that evil way the EXO knew how.  
"From who?" Ji-Yong challenges.  
"From Emperor Suho," Luhan's smirk grows bigger, "beloved Emperor of the entire universe and its planets."

"What does he want?" Ji-Yong asks, wanting to roll his eyes in his disinterest. This guy is taking too long.

The one on Luhan's right -- Kris -- speaks, "he wants us to tell you that he is sorry for your loss, although he offers it twenty years late."  
Ji-Yong furrows his brows. Loss? Twenty years late? "What loss?"

Tao opens his mouth, "your daughter. He took her--"  
"I don't have a daughter," Ji-Yong answers simply.

The three EXO look at each other. 

"What are you talking about," Tao presses, "you have a daughter. We captured her and her mother, she is with us now."

"Mother?" Ji-Yong is confused. What are these three on about?

"You mean you don't know?" Luhan asks, incredulous.

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Ji-Yong replies.

Kris leers, "then you don't know this woman, then?" Kris pulls his hand up to press his watch to reveal a holographic image of a woman with dirty blonde hair.

"Chae-Rin?" Ji-Yong mumbles to himself, eyes wide. He hasn't seen her since... twenty years ago.

She still looks the same. Older and thinner, her face gaunt, but still the same.

Oh, how he missed her face.

Luhan laughs. "Look, he actually does know her." 

Kris grips her hair tighter. Ji-Yong almost leaps out of the chair. "You see, King Ji-Yong, you impregnated her twenty years ago but she ran away before she could tell you because arrogant little King Ji-Yong wouldn't love her, he was always running around with other women."

So that's why she disappeared.

She could have...

Tao continues the story, "we caught her, of course. Her and your little baby princess Jennie."

Jennie. Ji-Yong commits that name to his memory. He has a little baby girl and her name is Jennie. 

Beautiful baby Jennie he hasn't met yet because he was a heartless man with a dick to Chae-Rin. 

But that was twenty years ago.

Beautiful young lady Jennie who had a life she didn't deserve because he didn't ask Chae-Rin to stay and made her think he was only using her for her body.

"So we're offering you a choice here, Ji-Yong." Tao smiles devilishly, "do you want to live a reckless life until you die of your liver failure but we kill your little girl?"

"Or do you want to hand over Milky Way to us and get your girls back?" Luhan suggests. "Don't worry, Emperor Suho won't let you forgo your decadent lifestyle so easily. He'll let you have whatever you want -- cars, money, girls, everything -- but Milky Way would be part of his empire."

"Where is she?" Ji-Yong demands. The crown jolts slightly forward on his head, but stays on. "Where's Chae-Rin?"

Luhan grins toothily. "She's somewhere in the empire, Ji-Yong. But I can't tell you, that wouldn't be fair game now, would it?"

"Tell me where she is!" Ji-Yong all but screams, "tell me where Chae-Rin and Jennie are, or I'll... I'll--"

"Hand over the kingdom?" Luhan interrupts with bemused expression on his face.

Ji-Yong almost says 'over my dead body', but he doesn't.

Luhan grins again as he puts his hands into his pockets. "We'll give you a week's time to think about it: hand over Milky Way to us to keep yourself and your family safe? Or keep Milky Way but we kill Jennie and Chae-Rin? Think about it."

Ji-Yong steels himself, angry at the terms.

"A week, Ji-Yong." Luhan repeats. "But for now--"

Luhan removes his hand from his pocket to reveal a remote control with only one red button on it. He smirks at the men in the palace and presses the button. The system shuts down, and not a second later, the palace explodes.

From the rubble the five men emerge. The crown is upside down on the rocks. Ji-Yong can't help but muse about how foreboding that is.

"Hyung!" Seung-Ri exclaims. Even with scraped knees Seung-Ri rushes to help Ji-Yong get up. 

"Seung-Ri," Ji-Yong groans, "Seung-Hyun, Daesung, Youngbae."

All the four advisers go towards him. 

"Seung-Ri," Ji-Yong turns to look at the man supporting his posture. "I need you to gather a fleet or so. As many as you think you need, you know best. I need you to search the entire EXO empire and find Chae-Rin and Jennie and bring them back here."

Seung-Ri nods quickly and runs off through the rubble out of the throne room.

"Daesung," Ji-Yong calls, "I need you to gather whoever you can find in this palace, make sure they are safe and unharmed. Gather them all to help you do the same for the rest of the kingdom."

Daesung nods as well and climbs off the rubble to go and find survivors of the explosion.

"Seung-Hyun."  
"Yes."  
"I need you to prepare our armies. The navy, the military, the air force. You will be the commander-in-chief. Prepare everyone for battle."

Without complaint Seung-Hyun sets off to do as he is told.

"Youngbae," Ji-Yong looks at the remaining adviser. "I need you to stay here might I need some assistance in dealing with whatever messages or calls I get."  
"Yes, sir," Youngbae salutes. 

Ji-Yong sets his jaw.

He is going to keep everyone safe -- the Milky Way, Chae-Rin, Jennie, himself. No one is going to give up to the EXO. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATIONS:  
> chapter title: "sticky rice cake" bc i thought it was funny.  
> 넌 항상 그래. 이기적인 새끼. = you're always like this, you selfish bastard. (this is from let's not fall in love by big bang, the part where the girl whispers)
> 
> i changed the title of the story if anyone noticed hehe
> 
> tumblr is sq-1, twitter is @asianellenpage if yall wanna say hello :D


	3. 차가운 세상 끝에

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a strange chapter to write

"Chae-Rin-ah!" a black-haired girl exclaims when the doors bust open.

"Good morning, Bom unnie," Chae-Rin greets, pushing her hood down to reveal her damp hair and face pale. She leans over carefully to see the tablet Bom was holding.

"What are you working on?" she asks.  
"It's for that guy in rehabilitation," Bom answers, occupied, "Minji's working on the more interesting stuff."  
"The hydrozyldrium?"   
"Nope, the atrentherkyacate. He has to get back out on the field quickly. His sister's downstairs with him crying, it's horrible."  
"Is it?" Chae-Rin says, for the lack of anything else to say. "Where's Minji?"

Bom nods to Minji's station right across her. All the vials and test tubes are empty. "She left a note on her tablet yesterday that she will be coming in the afternoon. She drove to Enmatsunai to deliver some duoziccial to some influential family."

"Enmatsunai, Enmatsunai, Enmatsunai," Chae-Rin mumbles to herself as she walks over to Minji's station and pick up the paper. True to account, there is a note on haphazardly-torn calendar paper saying that Minji will not be around in the morning due to the long drive to Incheon. She tries to remember who the delivery is addressed to. But so many orders come in from Enmatsunai right after the orders from Sokcheon that she can never remember who is who. "Did she really have to do it herself? We could have asked Bobby."

Bom gives Chae-Rin a look. "Bobby's in the outpost, Chae-Rin-ah. Yang Goon specifically sent him and a bunch of other boys to fight."  
"Mino, then?"  
"With Bobby."  
"Junhoe?"  
"With Bobby," Bom answers, "look, Chae-Rin, we're a little short on the literal manpower right now. Minji can handle herself, that kid was trained in capoiera."

"But what if they point a gun at her?" Chae-Rin cries. She's really worried, Minji is a child prodigy. After Dong-Wook oppa left, Minji was promoted to the job of chief alchemist, but that promotion did not give her the perk of being the brute force made to deliver the chemicals. Minji made, she should not and cannot be made to deliver.

"She took the Lambo with the arms. I made sure of it. Now please stop worrying." Bom responds, slightly annoyed but trying to cover it up because she understands where Chae-Rin is coming from with her worry. "Now go upstairs, Yang Goon is looking for you."

Visibly still not at ease, Chae-Rin huffs a breath and walks straight to the small manual elevator that leads all the way up to Yang Goon's office.

* * *

"Good morning, Mr President." Chae-Rin greeted when she walked in to the door of the office.

"Good morning," he replies shortly, putting his pen down. "Did you do what I asked you to?"

"Yes," Chae-Rin responds promptly, "I hacked into the billboard's projections. It now shows the logo of the rebellion."

"Did you get caught?"  
"No, I took out the cameras from the outside and inside some shops as well."

Yang Goon looks up from his table. "Better," he says in a low voice, "much... better."

Geez, Chae-Rin muses, is he still thinking about the Following Incident? "Thank you."

Yang Goon inhales, leaning forward. "Anyway, I need your help with something else."  
"What is it?"

"The woman downstairs," Yang Goon's eyes twinkle at the mention.  
"W-What about her?" Chae-Rin stutters.  
"Have you met her yet?"  
"No, I don't think I have."  
"Well, you should. I think you'll find her a possible asset to our cause."  
Well, that's just a bleak statement. "Of course, Mr President."

* * *

"W-What?" The girl chokes out. Her blue hair is unruly, her face tear-stained and red, eyes puffy. Chae-Rin pities her. 

"Your brother," Chae-Rin takes the woman's hand, "he was such an important man to our team. We want him to wake up as much as you do. We saw him do great things, and all the way till the end he held his ground and remained brave."

The blue-haired girl sniffs.

Chae-Rin continues talking. "Even with his young age he showed fearlessness and belief in his instincts, he was unbelievably admirable in holding against the EXO. It would have gone far worse if he did not move and chose to follow orders."

The blue-haired girl whimpered this time, and let out a bitter laugh. "Just like him not to listen to authority and end up being right."

"See," Chae-Rin lets out a little smile at that. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."

The girl looks at him, curious. 

"We want to recruit you to Peace Minus One."

The girl chokes. "W-What? What can I even do?"

Good question. 

"Don't worry about that," Chae-Rin blurts out, "we'll train you."

"But I can't do anything!" the girl exclaims, "I can't fight, I can't--"  
Chae-Rin smiles again, "we don't just fight here in Peace Minus One, we also create."  
"Create what?"  
"Create peace. If you join us, not only will you learn about how to create peace, but you can also avenge for the hurt they caused on your brother."

The girl's eyes light up at that. 

After a short silence of the two girls staring at each other, the blue-haired girl offers her hand to Chae-Rin. 

"My name is Dara."

* * *

Dara was not difficult to train. Under the important and prestigious wing of Minji (who came back from Enmatsunai relatively unscathed), she learned how to create the chemicals with most demand: tadyme, chihane, triwornox, athoside, byrqiniol, clacchylchin so well that Minji did not need to stop her research in creating new chemicals to make another batch of the basic ones. She could just ask her new Dara unnie to do it for her.

It's been weeks after Dara's recruitment, but her brother still hasn't woken up from his coma. Albeit it was partly drug-induced so his body with recuperate without any interruptions, Minji slightly feels on edge because it might have been a miscalculation on her part. Bom hits her for saying such terrifying things.

After hours of a productive day, Minji tries to offer Dara a ride home but she declines. "I have to watch my brother. What if he wakes up while I'm gone?"

Minji chews her lip, but lets Dara be.

* * *

It's a surprise that Yang Goon shuts down the science laboratory to call a meeting with Chae-Rin, Bom, Minji, and Dara.

"I called you all here for a reason," Yang Goon begins, "we do not have manpower."

The girls shuffle in their seats.

"As most of our trained men are in the outpost keeping out the EXO from any more planets, we do not have people trained enough to go on an ambush except you four."

All four of them reluctantly look at each other all with the same looks on their faces. What?

"There is a party in a few days," Yang Goon tosses a square envelope on the table. Dara takes it and tears it open gently. The president keeps talking.

"A party for the elite EXOtics -- the people who helped them gain power on this planet."

"All of them?" Bom clarified, furrowing her brows.

"All of them." Yang Goon nodded.

"Isn't that a bit too easy?" Chae-Rin butted in.  
"Whatever it is, just count your blessings." Minji snapped.

Yang Goon leaned back on his squeaky office chair, "Minji is right. We should plan a strike on these people to take them down. Without them, the EXO do not have the financial means to keep ruling this planet without making people notice."

"But," Dara puts the invitation down on her laptop after she reads it, "why include me? I'm still new, I can't--"

The four other people in the room laugh.

"It's an ambush, unnie," Chae-Rin giggles, placing a hand on Dara's shoulder, "it's not a battle, it's an organized chaos."

* * *

_("Bom unnie, I pulled in some strings for you to become the venue's singer."  
"Are you kidding me?")_

In the background, Bom's secret soulful voice fills in the function hall. _"Along my way 난 늘 이렇게 홀로이 서있지만..."_

Chae-Rin and Dara, all press their ears to the wooden doors, clad in black from head to toe. Dara even took the liberty of wearing a black beanie. 

"Alright, she's singing," Chae-Rin whispers, "let's do this."

_("Minji, you'll be in charge of the chemicals."  
"Like always." Minji flips her hair.)_

Minji pulls a bottle of the choking heptaphulfose from under the table she sat in and opens the bottle just as she puts on a mask over her face. She moves to stand up, the chair dragging across the floor. She always hated small talk.

 _("Don't you think we should have more -- I don't know -- pyrokinetics?"_  
"Great idea, Dara unnie, you're in charge of that."  
"Wait, wait-")

Chae-Rin kicks down the door violently, and everyone turns to look at them at the door. Without missing a beat, Bom pulls out the bottle of chemicals behind her back and shakes it swiftly. Once she feels heat grow in the bottle, she opens it and throws it to the audience. 

The table the bottle lands on sets on fire.

Dara pulls off her beanie to reveal a lighter resting on top of her blue hair. She takes it and flicks it on, pointing the small flame onto the nearest table cloth. Someone screams -- her hair is on fire.

Chae-Rin runs around flipping tables, feeling like she was twenty again as the people around her screamed. It was pandemonium.

One by one the people start falling asleep as they lost the will to fight against the poisonous choking air. Minji walks out the door, flipping a plate of peas along the way, followed by her older teammates. 

Chae-Rin throws a lit dynamite over her shoulder, and as they make their way to Minji's silver Lambo, the building explodes.

"Minji, take us home."

* * *

Chae-Rin pushes the door to her house open. 

The place is dark. "Jennie-ah?" Chae-Rin calls out into the darkness. She toes off her shoes and walks down the short hall leading to their living area. This is strange, it's nine in the evening and there is no sign of her daughter in her house. She would have noticed that the door opened and her mother arrived home, she always notices.

Chae-Rin traipses through the darkness, feeling the walls for the light switch and flicking it on. Empty. "Jennie?"

Chae-Rin tries Jennie's bedroom next. "Jennie-ah?" she opens the door without knocking. The room is fully dark, save for the familiar blue glow hovering over the bed. Chae-Rin moves closer to check the source of the light, when she hears the distinct voice of her daughter.

 _"넌 항상 그래. 이기적인 새끼--"_  

"Jennie Lee!" Chae-Rin screams. She swiftly grabs the portable projector from Jennie's eyes, along with its communicator and her small pack of duoziccial-- wait.

This isn't duoziccial. It's a pale pink, like pink lemonade. Where did she even get this? This can't be something Minji made.

Jennie screams as she is torn from her projections, both because she was going through so well and because she did not expect her mother to rip it out of her so painfully.

"Mom!" Jennie shrieks, covering her head with both of her arms to keep her mother's possible welts away from her.

"Jennie!" Chae-Rin screams in response. "What are you doing?"  
"Nothing!" whines Jennie, still shielding herself from her mother, which was right because Chae-Rin delivers a sharp smack to her daughter's head. 

Jennie falls to her bed from the collision, but she makes no sound.

"What are you doing?" Chae-Rin interrogates, "where did you get this? How did you get this?"

"Mom, I--"   
"Jennie!" tears are welling up in her eyes as she looks at  her daughter. She is so disappointed.

"I told you to keep out of PMO tech!" Chae-Rin exclaims.  
"You did! But--" Jennie tries to reason, but Chae-Rin interrupts her.  
"But what, Jennie? You deliberately went against what I said!" Chae-Rin rubs a hand over her face.  
"Mom, please let me explain!" she pleads, biting her lip. She swears she hears her mother mumble something along the lines of, "so rebellious, just like your dad."

"Mom...?" she tries again, after a moment of silence.  
"What?" Chae-Rin glares at Jennie.  
"About... dad..." Jennie chews at her lip again.

Chae-Rin freezes. "What about him?" Is this...

"I..." Jennie hesitates, "I might be using PMO tech with some prototype formula to talk to dad in his dreams."

There is a pause. 

"Well?" Chae-Rin demands. "I'm waiting." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations and credits: 
> 
> chapter title: "don't leave me at the end of the cold world" (taken from 2NE1's Come Back Home)  
> Bom's song at the EXOtic gala: "along ma way, in this way I wont do this alone" (taken from RedRoc's Along My Way ft Bom and Masta Wu)
> 
> come talk to me on Twitter @asianellenpage or Tumblr sq-1!! <3


	4. 넌 심장을 도려내 보여봐

_'will be home late. dont think you can do whatever you want though. youre still grounded. be home by 6 with dinner. i want the rolls pls. and do the laundry.'_   
_'i dont care if youre about to turn 20. while you still live under my house you cannot do things like this.'_   
_'i trust you kiddo.'_

Jennie sighs at the texts she received.

_'yes mom.'_

At least she let her out to buy dinner. She knows how to pander to Jennie's needs of being a modern woman who is unable to cook.

She gingerly puts her schoolbag into the basket in front of her white scooter -- one of the many graces from her mom after she realized that she was going to be late if she dropped Jennie off at her new junior college like she used to when Jennie was still in primary and secondary school.

Jennie gets on the scooter and drives off, waving at her best friend Jinny who was pouting because Jennie couldn't hang out with her today.

"I hate you, Jennie!" Jinny yells and sticks her tongue out at Jennie.  
"Love you too!" Jennie chuckles and drives out the gate. Time to get dinner, she thinks to herself, as she checks her handy brown leather watch. It's four thirty-five.

She's got time.

She should get a can of Pringles too while she's at it.

~~

"Hey, Suhyun unnie."

"Hey, Jennie. Grounded again?" Suhyun snorts. Jennie rolls her eyes goodnaturedly.

"You know it. Hey, do you think you can scan the Pringles in a different receipt?" Jennie asks, shaking the can of pink Pringles in her hand. Suhyun chuckles again.

"Of course. What'd you get grounded for this time?"

"Stole some tech from my mom's office, she caught me tinkering with it and some other stuff."

"Ooh, rebel," Suhyun coos, "for how long?"

Jennie shrugs, "until Auntie Minji figures out the chemical I used."

Suhyun stops in her ministrations. "Wait, so you're saying the formula is still new?"

"Yep. Well, not really. Jinny gave it to me like a few years ago, but I didn't really bother looking into it. I just knew it worked."

Suhyun whistled. "For someone in STEM you really aren't that inquisitive."

Jennie sneers jokingly, "for someone whose mom is in PMO you really aren't keen on following in her footsteps."

Suhyun shoves her. Jennie laughs. "Hey, I have plans! Just, not now. I want to go to school first."

Jennie shrugs, seeing Suhyun's point.

"Besides," Suhyun's voice drops, "how do you know I'm not paid to go undercover as a civilian right now?"

Jennie stares at her blankly, trying to get her to burst into laughter. She and Suhyun have been friends since her mother wormed her way into Peace Minus One, the organization leading the rebellion against the EXO, and met and became friends with Suhyun's mother Auntie Bom.

But he doesn't laugh. Jennie's blood runs cold.

Suhyun presses a button on the register, and the lights flicker in the convenience store. The cameras are off.

Suhyun reaches for the drawer under the register, taking out a small paper bag about the size of a small notebook. She hands it to Jennie.

"Here," she whispers. Jennie takes the paper bag. "A woman came by today. Asked me to hand this to a girl named Jennie, daughter of Chae-Rin."

Jennie isn't sure if her heart is beating or stopping.

"Who--" she looks up. Suhyun only shrugs.

"I don't know her, but I know she's not from here. The air around her, kind of different."

Jennie nods reluctantly, her gaze settling back on the package in her hands. She takes it out of the paper bag.

It's a pink tape, like a Playstation cartridge. She stares at it, flipping it from front to back. There is no inscription.

"I don't--" she waves the tape thing around, "what is this?"

Suhyun shrugs.

Jennie huffs and places it back in the paper bag carefully. She has no time to think about what this thing is. She takes her purchases from the counter and smiles at Suhyun. "Thanks, unnie." She has to get home.

Suhyun smiles back. "No problem. Text me about it?"

Jennie presses a finger to her nose to say 'nosy, nosy'. Suhyun laughs silently.

"You know it."

Jennie rolls her eyes. "See you, unnie."

"See you."

~~

Not ten minutes after Jennie arrived home and loaded up the washing machine, there is a knock on the door.

She looks through the keyhole, and the sight that greets her is a man with very tall hair like yellow grass. She furrows her brows. Who is he?

She opens the door slightly. "Yes?"

"Are you Jennie Lee?" the man has a gruff voice.  
"Uh, yes?"  
"Can I come in?"  
Jennie glares at him. "Excuse me."

The man meets her eyes, "I know your dad."

The mention of her dad almost makes Jennie tear the door out of its frame to be open enough to let him in. But she doesn't.

"Sorry, I don't offer my house to strangers."  
"But this is important," the man argued.

But Jennie stood her ground. "If you know my dad then you would also know my mom. I'm not letting you in until she says you're alright."

"But-"  
"No," says Jennie curtly, and shuts the door in the man's face.

~~

He doesn't leave.

~~

Jennie kicks over her bag when she hears a strange plastic noise coming from it. The cartridge.

She crouches to the floor to open the bag and retrieve the cartridge from its paper bag. She looks over it again, turning it over and over in her hand. She doesn't have a reader... How will she know what this cartridge is for?

She runs her fingers along the ridges of the cartridge, when a beeping noise startles her out of her mulling. On the side of the cartridge facing Jennie, a red pixelated '1 / 4 ?' is glows against the pink.

What?

~~

It's around eight-thirty when her phone rings on her study table -- "엄마" flashing on the screen. Jennie drops the screwdriver she uses to try and take the cartidge apart to pick up her phone.

"Hello?" she says as she picks up.

"Open the door, please," is all Chae-Rin says into the receiver before hanging up.

Jennie leaves her room quickly, rushing to the front door and peeking through the peephole to check if her mother is really there. True to word she is, looking stern. The man from earlier in the afternoon is stood right beside her looking sheepish. She almost wants to laugh, and opens the door.

"Hello," her mother says as she comes in the door. "Did you get dinner?"

Jennie nods, stepping to the side to let her mother and their guest in.  
"Have you eaten?" Chae-Rin follows up, taking off her shoes and walking through the hall into the living room.   
"Yeah," Jennie answers, voice soft as she stares at their visitor making slow work at his shoes. She shuts the door and bolts it and walks off, ignoring the man.

Her mother puts her handbag on the coffee table, "do we have anything we can cook for that guy?"  
"I-I'm not sure," answers Jennie. She's sure there are some eggs, or probably some chilli...

Chae-Rin is removing her watch from her wrist. "Can you go check while I talk to him? I don't know what he's doing here..."

Without hesitation Jennie nods and makes her way to the dark nook of the kitchen.

Once she returns to the living room -- they have like two eggs and one tomato -- the man is sat on their couch with Chae-Rin. "Jennie, can you go get some water for this man? Also what do we have in our fridge?"  
"Two eggs and a tomato."  
"I'll pick some groceries up on the way home tomorrow," Chae-Rin declares. She turns to the man. "Are you hungry?"

"Slightly," he answers, still maintaining his cool.

"Alright," she acknowledges. She turns back to Jennie. "Water, please."

Jennie runs out of the living room.

~~

She returns with a glass full of water and her secret can of pink Pringles, which she hands to the man. "Sorry I didn't let you in. We can share this if you want."

The man looks at her with a look she perceives as judgemental. "Pink Pringles? Really?"

Jennie snatches her arm back, "well, if you don't want it, then you don't have to eat it!"

The man laughs, his eyes disappearing into little creases. "You are just like your father."

"Well he hasn't met her, so I doubt he has any influence," her mother's voice sounds from behind them. She's bearing a plate with an egg omelette stuffed with diced tomatoes.

"Don't be picky," Chae-Rin says as she puts the plate down on the coffee table, "we usually don't eat at home so we have no groceries, but this kid got herself grounded for trying to cuss at her dad in his dreams and this is all we had."

The man seems to freeze. "Cuss...?"

Chae-Rin glances at Jennie. "Yep, she called him a selfish bastard--"

"It's you!" the man all but screams. Jennie is taken aback.

"What..." she furrows her brows, staring at the man then at her mother.  
"It's you!" he repeats, "you're the voice Ji-Yong has been hearing in his dreams for like, twenty years!"  
"How do you know that?" Jennie asks, and instead of the man answering, it's her own mother.

"Jennie-ah, I'd like you to meet Youngbae -- he's one of your father's royal advisers."

Jennie freezes in her seat.

What?

Youngbae?

Father?

Royal?

Advisers?

What?

"What!?" shrieks Jennie. "What do you mean 'royal adviser'?"

Youngbae looks at Chae-Rin, "what kind of information are you withholding from your kid?"

Chae-Rin meets his gaze, "it's not withholding; she didn't ask."

"I did!" Jennie cuts in. "I asked where dad is and why he wasn't with us?"  
"And I told you he was in Earth and he didn't want a kid so I didn't tell him and I ran away."  
"You didn't tell me he was some sort of king!"

"King of the Milky Way, actually," Youngbae mumbles, and Jennie's eyes almost pop out of her skull.

"King!" she yells, "king of the Milky Way! I'm like, some sort of missing princess right now!"  
"Don't get so ahead of yourself, Jennie, you can't even take care of yourself, let alone a whole galaxy," Chae-Rin states simply.

But Jennie doesn't listen. Instead, she stares into space. "I'm Mia Thermopolis."  
Chae-Rin is not impressed by her dramatics. "Your dad's not dead."

"He could be, though," Youngbae raises a finger. The two women look at him.

"He's, uh..." he stutters, then turns to Jennie. "He's actually dying."

"What's wrong?" Chae-Rin's voice sounds distant. Jennie looks at her.

Youngbae takes a deep breath. "Nothing changed after you left," he begins, "he kept drinking, clubbing, taking drugs, having girls on his bed... Doctor Ji-Yeon diagnosed him with liver cirrhosis."

Chae-Rin sighs, "I told him it would come to that eventually."  
"Well, he didn't listen," he shrugs, "until now even with a doctor's diagnosis. He's still drinking and partying."  
"So what does it have to do with Jennie? Why are you looking for her? Didn't he impregnate someone else?" Chae-Rin takes her daughter's hand.  
Youngbae shakes his head. "Not that we know of. Jennie is the only daughter we know exists."  
"What do you want with her?"

"The EXO are coming," Youngbae looks straight at them. "They came to us. They told us you were here and that Ji-Yong should hand over the galaxy to them or they'll kill you."

"And why is that a big deal?" Chae-Rin raises her voice. "Why is it a big deal to Ji-Yong if we're dead? He didn't care for me the way I wanted him to when I was on Earth, what more if it was Jennie?"  
"Because he would have cared if he found out he had a kid -- hell, he cares now!"  
"But only because Jennie is here! If she weren't and the EXO threatened me, he wouldn't be here!"  
"How would you know that?"  
"Because I'm living it right now!"

There's a tense silence as Chae-Rin and Youngbae stare each other down.

"Jennie and I... We've been in hiding after I left Earth. I arrived in this planet the moment they were captured by the EXO. They tried to take Jennie away from me because she had no father to answer for her. I had to do something, so I joined the resistance force of this planet. And not once did Ji-Yong think to rescue us -- not when Jennie was pulled out of school for months at a time because she was either bullied or tortured for having a single mother." At the end of her story, Chae-Rin had tears falling from her eyes. Jennie gripped her hand tighter.

"That's where I got the idea of talking to my dad in his dreams," Jennie began, "mom's friend Uncle Dong-Wook used to be the alchemist for the resistance, he was talking about this formula for months and months -- it was this thing where plugging into a projector combined with this serum would allow you to join the REM of a person sleeping. So I stole a bunch of things and I tried it, I got into my friend Jinny's dreams and I thought, hey, why not just think of the word 'dad' and maybe I'll get to him and I did. And I did this in secret for fifteen years because I hated him so much for leaving us. It's not fair he gets to be the king of a galaxy while his family is struggling to survive."

Another long silence.

"Jennie," Youngbae holds out a hand to her, "please let me take you and your mother to Earth. You deserve to see your father."

~~

Even with much prodding, Chae-Rin did not end up joining Jennie in travelling back to Earth. Her excuse was that the EXO waited for no one, not even happy family reunions.

As Jennie and Youngbae loaded up into Youngbae's pod, they eyed Chae-Rin wearily: Jennie with guilt, Youngbae with regret. Chae-Rin just smiled at them.

"Go," Chae-Rin says to Jennie. "But don't think you aren't grounded anymore."

"Thank you, mom," Jennie whispers into her mother's shoulder. Chae-Rin only combs a hand through the back of Jennie's hair. "You sure you don't wanna come?"

"The revolution doesn't wait for anyone, peach," she answers. "Besides, who will be making the mess you will clean up when you get back?"

Jennie laughs, and breaks away.

Chae-Rin turns to Youngbae. "Youngbae oppa, I trust you. You know, if I stayed in Earth and told him, you and the others would have been godfathers."

Youngbae beams at her, his eyes disappearing into tiny slits. "Who says we can't be?"

Chae-Rin smiles again, "be careful, okay?"

~~

"The princess is here!" the voice echoes through the hall.

Under her voice, Jennie sings, " _this beat is automatic, supersonic, hynotic, funky fresh..._ " which makes Youngbae laugh out loud right beside her.

"Your father's sense of humor right there," he states, amused.

Jennie beams.

A distressed-looking blonde man donning a white robe runs down the marble floor, "Youngbae _hyung_!"  
"Seung-Ri-ah!" Youngbae calls back, "what is it? What's wrong?"

"It's Ji-Yong _hyung_!" cries Seung-Ri.

Before Seung-Ri could even finish his sentence, Youngbae has already grabbed Jennie by the wrist and drags her through the hall.

~~

There is a man with sleepy-looking eyes lain on the large red bed in the center of the room. He is thin, fingers especially so. A blanket is draped over him, he looks comfortable, yet unhealthy.

Youngbae motions to him, "Jennie, I'd like you to meet your father."

At the sound of the word 'father', the man on the bed tries to spring up. He does with slight difficulty, and when he manages to sit up, their eyes meet.

"Jennie," the man says in a weak voice. "Hello."  
Jennie debates within herself whether she should bow or not. She does, although a second too late compared to her uncharacteristically small voice saying ' _annyeong haseyo_ '.

The man in bed gives her a weak smile. The same man in a white robe whispers, "you have his eyes."  
She turns to him, "t-thank you."

The man beckons her over to the side of the bed. "Come."

She does, approaching slowly, looking around the room to the eyes that follow her. She's really nervous. All the plans she had of throwing a fit that even her own mother would be embarrassed yet proud of had gone completely out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of her father's chamber. He's sick, he doesn't need another heartache.

"How was the journey?"  
"It was okay," she says in a soft voice again.

"You're very pretty," he says after staring at her for a while, "Chae-Rin and I did good. We did very good. I'm so happy to see you."

Jennie doesn't know what to say to that.

"How old are you?"  
"Nineteen."

Youngbae cuts in, "and for fifteen of those, she was haunting you in your dreams!"

Her father suddenly looks more awake. "You were the one who kept calling me a selfish bastard?"  
Jennie bites her lower lip, and nods reluctantly.

But her father isn't angry. Instead, he just laughs.

"Just like your mother to do something like that. Where is she?"  
"She didn't wanna come."  
He looks disappointed, "I wanted to see her. It must have been too much to ask."  
Jennie shakes her head, "no, she's just... Busy with work. The rebellion doesn't, you know, rebel by itself." She cringes at that internally.

"Rebellion?"  
"She, uh... she's one of the leaders of the rebellion against the EXO on the planet we live in. The Peace Minus One."

A smile grows on her father's face. "Incredible. So incredible. She's such an incredible woman."

Another silence.

"I reckon you have questions."

Oh god, does she have a lot of them.

"I'll answer them over dinner. Have you eaten yet?"  
Jennie shakes her head.   
"Alright, we'll get you a nice dinner and then I'll tell you what you want to know and you'll tell me what I missed for the past nineteen years. Would that be alright?"

Jennie nods reluctantly, and her father lies back down. "Seung-Ri-ah, can my daughter and I have dinner at seven, here in this room?"  
The robed man nods. "Yes, hyung."  
"Thank you, Seung-Ri."

~~

Tucking in to a chicken dinner on her father's balcony overlooking the well-lit capital city of Earth, Jennie gets the answers she was looking for her whole life.

Her father's name is Kwon Ji-Yong, the king of the Milky Way. He's sick with liver cirrhosis so he had to find an heir or the crown and the galaxy will go to someone else that isn't their family. Other than that,  He trusts his friends -- his royal advisers Youngbae ("the one who fetched you,"), Seung-Ri ("the hyperactive one in the robe,"), Seung-Hyun ("the one in douchebag glasses,"), and Daesung ("the one with hair covering his eyes.") -- but it would be nice to have blood purity.

Other than being sick with liver cirrhosis and having no kids, the threat of the EXO taking the Milky Way and the lives of both Chae-Rin and Jennie scared him. To beat them to the punch, Ji-Yong sent Youngbae to fetch Jennie and Chae-Rin but only Jennie arrived. Initially it was supposed to be Seung-Ri but, "as you saw earlier, he was probably not the best choice to send to meet my daughter."

Daughter.

Ji-Yong cannot believe he has a daughter. With the best girl he ever had the chance to meet.

"Best girl?" Jennie asks, stuffing a piece of steak into her mouth. This is really good. She's gonna call her mom later and tell her what she had for dinner.

Ji-Yong nods, and recalls the story of how he met Chae-Rin at university while doing his masters in Law. He needed to do that to properly be king, although he studied music for his Bachelor's degree.

Chae-Rin was the daughter of one of Ji-Yong's law professors, Dr. Lee. She attended the same university as a music major, and came by her father's office after her classes. Ji-Yong thought she had the best-looking ass he's ever seen.

Jennie chokes on her steak.

"'Best-looking ass'?" she laughs.  
Ji-Yong shrugs, also highly amused. "I was a piece of shit back then, okay."  
"You're still a piece of shit now."  
"Hey," Ji-Yong shoves her playfully, "watch it, kiddo. I'm your dad."  
"Of course, Mr. King Man."

Ji-Yong then continues to relay the story of how he flirted with Chae-Rin till she finally allowed him to take her on a date. A few more dates and she finally put out, and they arranged to become friends with benefits because she couldn't risk her father knowing that she was with one of his students. It benefited Ji-Yong too, because then no one would spread rumors that he was with his professor's daughter as a way to boost his grades. He's not that bad, alright. He gives a shit, sometimes.

It went on until Ji-Yong graduated and then his father abdicated so he could become king. Even with his position as king of the galaxy, he was still immature and sought after women, even at the same time as Chae-Rin. Chae-Rin was heartbroken, he realizes it now, because one day she didn't appear. He went to ask his parents and was told that she ran away and no longer kept in contact. Nineteen years later, Jennie appeared.

Jennie took this as a sign that it's her turn to speak. She spoke about how all she knew about her life was VP-032 and EXO and Emperor Suho ("it used to be called Eustroclid," her father recalls, "they're sweet people. I think that's why they got captive by the EXO.") and her mother who refused to answer questions about her father until she was about thirteen. She and her mother were in hiding under false names on the deed of the house, courtesy of the head of the PMO Yang Goon. Jennie was exposed constantly to prototype technology, alchemy, and art because the moment she was born her mother was already climbing up the ranks at the PMO. She was raised well, even though she was under the guidance of rebels with good intentions.

That's where and when she found the dream-entering chemical and the projector. They usually use it for battle strategies, training and teambuilding, sometimes for medicinal value, and all the chemicals injected into the projector vary depending on purpose. The dream-entering chemical was just a prototype her mother's friend Uncle Dong-Wook made, but it was rejected. Jennie stole it because it looked pink and pretty, and when she looked at its properties and asked around about it apparently you could enter dreams with it. She tried it first with her friend Jinny, and when she realized it worked, she tried it with thinking about the word 'dad'. It worked, and for fifteen years this went on: she terrorized her father's dreams by calling him a selfish bastard because she was upset that he didn't love her mother.

Jennie was in the STEM track at school -- she loved chemistry down to her bones and was interested in being a xenophysician.

"You may look like Chae-Rin and I," Ji-Yong says, "but I don't know where you got your brains from."  
"Hey," squeals Jennie, "I can sing like you and mom too!"  
"Of course you can, but you can tell me how to fix the ozone layer more than sing."  
"I can sing you the instructions."

But lately, Jennie muses out loud to her father, the fates seem to have a different plan for her -- a mother in a rebellion against the EXO, a father who is trying to fight against the EXO ever entering their galaxy. She doesn't think that with the responsibility of getting the EXO away from the ones she loves and the innocent, she would be able to be a doctor like she's wanted. Hell, she was told that she was the princess of the Milky Way like four hours ago. She needs time to realign her life and rethink her goals.

That's when it dawned on Ji-Yong that even if he missed Jennie's childhood, Jennie is still a kid. A kid with dreams and plans and ambitions for herself, but suddenly she is made to mature on such short notice to protect a kingdom she didn't even know existed and was in line for the throne for.

"Don't worry, kid, I'll help you."  
"Really?"  
"Of course. What, I'm just gonna abdicate just because you got here like my dad did?"  
Jennie shrugs, "you could." She stuffs another morsel into her mouth.  
Ji-Yong shoots Jennie a look. "I'm not. Besides, I owe you a lot for missing nineteen years and a whirlwind romance with your mom. Now get up, I'm gonna make someone show you your room then in the morning we start training."  
"Training? For what?"  
"For defending the universe."

~~

After a harsh trumpet noise in her ear to wake her up and a breakfast she did not have time to savor because Uncle Daesung was screaming in her ear to "hurry up, kid, hurry up! Your dad's waiting!", she is stood in a garden called 'The South Garden'. Ji-Yong eyes her from head to toe.

"You forgot something." Ji-Yong says simply.

"What?" Jennie turns to her side, "what is it? I can go back and get it."

"Daesung didn't tell you?" Ji-Yong looked miffed, "I told him to make sure you brought it!" Ji-Yong is already pulling out some sort of communication device that looked like the ones from Star Trek.

"Daesung-ah!" he yells into the communicator.  
"Yes, _hyung_!" Daesung responds quickly.  
"I told you to make Jennie bright the cartridge!"

The cartridge. 1 / 4 ?

"O-Oh, yes, hyung! Sorry, hyung!" There's some shuffling happening from Daesung's end of the line, and Jennie feels bad for him. Why can't Jennie be the one to bring it back here?

"Dad, honestly," Jennie sighs, "I can go get it myself."  
"No," Ji-Yong firmly replies, "you stay here. I'll teach you archery."

Archery?

"Uh." How intelligent she sounds.

"Come on, let's go."

Daesung comes back with the paper bag containing the cartridge, and hands it carefully to Jennie. Jennie receives it, unsure in her movement, and pulls it out of the paper bag. Ji-Yong hovers behind her.

"Do you know how to use this cartridge?" he asks.  
"You have to put it on a reader, I think," Jennie answers, racking her brain for any movie that she remembers seeing a cartridge in.   
"Exactly."  
She turns to her father. "Do you have a reader?"  
He shakes his head, "no, Jennie. This cartridge has a special reader that isn't found on this planet."

Jennie looks somewhat offended. "What?"

Ji-Yong takes the cartridge from her hands and turns it around in his. "In playing a game, you need a cartridge, a reader, a controller, and a screen, correct?"  
Jennie nods.   
"There is a special reader, controller, and screen that goes with this cartridge. The last person who owned this cartridge decided that you were the best person to entrust it with, and left it where you could find it--"

Suhyun handing it to her, Jennie thinks back.

"--the past possessors of the reader, controller, and screen also thought the same and left their items in different planets on space with wherever the person they entrusted with it could easily find it in."

"What happens if we find all these items and their possessors?" Jennie stares at her cartridge in her father's hands.

"We put them together," Ji-Yong replies simply, "and we will see."

~~

They're in some sort of control room.

Ji-Yong rises onto a platform with a podium- or not.

On the podium, Ji-Yong starts pressing buttons that clues Jennie in that it isn't a normal podium but a machine of sorts.

And with that, the whole room's lights dim out to give way to blue projections of stars and planets to occupy the space. This was a comprehensive map of the recently-charted universe.

Jennie is in awe.

"Welcome to the universe," Ji-Yong says simply. He makes another flick, and half the planets in the universe projection turn an ominous grey, "and welcome to the EXO's universe."  Jennie tries not to show her terror. That's a lot of planets.

Ji-Yong makes a move with his hand like he's swatting a fly away, and the projections rotate until the projection clearly labeled 'Earth' comes to a halt before Jennie.

"That's us right there," Ji-Yong points. Jennie lifts a hand to touch the projection, and jumps when the projection ejects a secondary label: an image of the same pink tape that she possesses, and her name under it 'CONFIRMED: UNDER JENNIE -- FIRE'.

"Arson...?" Jennie whispers to herself. What?

Ji-Yong chuckles, "it just means you're in-charge of firepower, nothing to it."  
Jennie twists to look at her father, "Fire?"  
"The element of fire, of course."  
Jennie furrows her brows, "I'm not sure I follow..."  
But Ji-Yong only smiles. "Of course you don't."

Ji-Yong pushes his arms out and parts them wide, and the projection seems to zoom out. There, she sees various three other planets along with Earth all labeled with the three other missing parts of the console -- the screen, the controller, and the reader.

"The screen," Ji-Yong prompts, zooming in to the planet an extremely far distance in the north from Jennie's location on Earth. "It's in a planet called Neoflore -- easy to get, since you see it's blue, it means that the EXO have not gotten there yet."

Jennie stares at the projection. "Why do I feel like there's bad news?"

"Smart girl," Ji-Yong chuckles, "the bad news is, Milky Way's technology is just as bad as the EXO's, which means the reason why the planet is still on neutral ground is because no one has developed the technology capable enough of sending men out there to, in the EXO's case 'conquer'--"  
"--and in our case, make diplomatic ties." Jennie mumbles in understanding.   
"Exactly," nods Ji-Yong. "Neoflore is a water-based planet, everyone there is like, sirens or mermaids of sorts. Rarely will you ever find an island with people living there. So it would still be difficult for the EXO since only one of the twelve clans is very keen on water."

Jennie looks at her father again, "would oxygen tanks work there?"  
"You talk as if you're going."  
"I am," Jennie answers, indignant. "I'm going, I'm going to get the screen."

There is a silence on Ji-Yong's side. "Jennie, I don't think it's going to be that easy."  
"Why? You just said it was easy to get there."

Ji-Yong doesn't answer. Instead, he flicks at the projection of Neoflore to zoom in. There, the label for the planet is clearer.

'UNCONFIRMED: UNDER ROSEANNE -- WATER'

"Who's Roseanne?"   
"Your guess is just as good as mine, Jennie-ah. She must be the previous possessor's chosen one."

Jennie huffs a large breath, "I still don't understand!" she cries, "you have a tracker that leads to the other parts of the console, yet you don't know what it does, who these people who have the items are, what they do, what the point is!"

"Don't speak to me like that!" Ji-Yong barks back, "the last time we needed the possessors of the console was way before I was born, it was my father who created it. When I was born he didn't think a war would happen again that we needed the console and its possessors again. I'm just following clues just as much as you are."

There's another silence.

"I'm sorry," Jennie apologizes in a small voice, "I... I didn't... I'm just so scared. I don't know what to do." Jennie hides her face in her hands in shame. Ji-Yong quickly steps down the platform and takes his daughter in a hug.

"Hey, hey, don't be upset," he pleads, "I know how it is to be frustrated and not know. That was me when I was looking for you, when your mother left, when my father abdicated. But I will do my best to make this easy for you, and so will your godfathers. I promise."

Jennie's eyes are red as she embraces her father. "Thank you. For coming to look for me and for trying to reconnect and for trying to help."

Ji-Yong ruffles her hair.

"Now let's go find this Roseanne."

~~

Jennie's eyes are deep. She's almost as bad as Uncle Seung-Ri.

"Uncle Youngbae," she croaks, "I'm so tired."

Youngbae only laughs behind his sunglasses. "Your fault for wanting to take a connecting flight from Earth to Osliapara to Bocluogantu to Foflides to Neoflore to find the screen."  
"Don't remind me," Jennie groans as she pulls her bag up from the under her seat. Youngbae laughs again.  
"Of course, Princess," he mocks. Jennie swats her uncle on the arm, hushing him.

Jennie is lucky for small mercies, if first class on all the flights on her way to Neoflore for the Princess of the Milky Way and her Royal Adviser and guardian could be counted as a 'small mercy'. She had good meals on the flights, fluffy blankets and a booth of her own it was like she had her own room -- a very spoiled lifestyle.   
Another small mercy would be the non-disclosure agreement her Uncles Seung-Ri and Seung-Hyun made the travel lines sign preventing them from revealing the existence of a Princess of the Milky Way or there will be serious legal consequences, but she thought that was just a must.

"We're here on Neoflore anyway, it's not going to be a problem."

Jennie rolls her eyes. "Easy for you to say, you can swim."  
Youngbae turns to her, amused. "Who said anything about swimming?"

~~

"Dad didn't tell me about a submarine."

"Your dad didn't tell us that he knew someone on Neoflore-- thank you," Youngbae accepts the cup of tea with both hands from the boy who was supposed to be steering the submarine, but it seems to be on auto-pilot. Auto-captain. Auto... driven. Something along those lines.

The boy smiles at him. "I don't know your dad, actually."  
The both of them stare at him.   
"I knew your mom."

Jennie thanks whatever higher power willed her not to drop the teacup. "How?"

"Bom's my mom."

"What!?" Jennie shrieks. "Bom... Auntie Bom is your mother!?"  
The boy sticks a finger in his ear and shakes it. "Yep, she is."  
"So your sister is Suhyun?"  
"Yep." The boy says, and offers a hand to Jennie, "Chan-hyuk -- Bom's son, Suhyun's older brother."

"How did you know we were coming?" Jennie takes his hand, although disbelieving. "And how come I've never met or seen you before?"

Chan-hyuk laughs. "Mom and Suhyun don't like to talk about it, but I'm undercover for the PMO-- Suhyun actually is, too, did she tell you? We don't really talk about it, about how our jobs are really dangerous and stuff-- I got a call from her by the way, she told me your mother wanted to speak to me--"  
"M-My mother?" Jennie stutters. How did she get involved?

Chan-hyuk nods, "yeah, your mom. She said the PMO is providing some sort of help for you should you need it, and I got roped into this. I'm not even sure what I'm doing, I'm just supposed to drive you to these coordinates?" the blithering boy turns around to grab a piece of paper off the dashboard, a set of numbers on it. "And we don't even use coordinates here, we use actual addresses and stuff and I had to like, calculate this and I just had a strange two days doing this, okay."

Jennie wants to laugh. Chan-hyuk is so much like Auntie Bom.

~~

"What the hell?" the strawberry blonde girl demands from them. Jennie almost groans in her face. "Look, I don't know what you want from me, but I can assure you I don't have anything of that sort at my house. Stop asking. I don't know where this screen is. I don't even know what that is. Now please leave."

Jennie eyes her strongly, "then why are you so defensive?" she demands.  
"I'm not being defensive!"  
"Of course you aren't," Jennie shoves past the girl and walks into her house. "Explains why you won't let us into your house."

"Hey!" the girl grabs her wrist. "You can't just--"   
"Then why are you pretending so hard not to know shit?" yells Jennie.  
"I'm not pretending!" the girl cries, slightly terrified.

"Then tell us why the coordinates lead us to here!" Jennie shoves the slip of paper she received from Chan-hyuk to the other girl's face. "You clearly know something about the screen, or the possessor. You know Roseanne!"

The girl freezes. "Did you say 'Roseanne'?"  
"Yes! Now will you help us?"

The girl finally admits defeat. "I may be able to help." She opens the door to let the stunned Youngbae in, and once he's in, she closes the door and locks it behind her. She rushes around the house, shutting all the windows and bolting them, covering them with their curtains, draping the house in relative darkness.

"Follow me," her voice drops in volume, and Jennie and Youngbae are led from the living room of the rustic brown house through the halls into a door leading into a dark stairwell. She goes down the stairs, and they follow her down.

They're in a basement, Jennie infers, going by the variety of things shoved towards the walls gathering dust. That, and the outright lack of windows letting any light in. A red leather couch sits in the middle of the room wrapped in plastic, and in front of it is an ominously old and bulky-looking TV covered in its own plastic, clearly on but the writing warped by the plastic.

The girl lifts the plastic covering off the couch, motioning for Jennie and Youngbae to sit. She approaches the old TV and lifts the plastic to reveal the writing '1 / 4 ?'.

At the same time there's a click in Jennie's brain, there is a echoing beep from both the screen and Jennie's bag. On the screen, the number changes from 1 to 2. Jennie's eyes widen, and rustles for her bag to pull out the cartridge.

Just like the screen, the red writing on the cartridge shows '2 / 4 ?'. Roseanne's eyes widen too.

"I-I'm Roseanne," she stutters out. She turns to look at the TV beside her. "And I believe this is the screen you were looking for."

Jennie and Youngbae share a look.

"We're going to need to buy extra baggage."  
"Already on it."

~~

As Jennie and Youngbae load up the screen to Chan-hyuk's submarine to go back to Earth, Jennie explains to Roseanne what was happening -- her identity, the threat of the EXO, the pink tape she possessed, the missing parts of the console and her quest to find them and the answer of how to defeat the EXO. She also explained that the presence of the possessors of the parts of the console was of utmost importance -- the past processors thought of her capable enough to provide and operate their part of the console.

"Are you trying to ask me to come with you?"  
"No, I'm telling you you have to."  
"Gee, thanks for extending your cordial invitation."

And in return, Roseanne explains to Jennie how the screen came into her possession.

Apparently a woman named Milky had come to her planet long ago, and everyone thought she was a witch. She never left her home and no one was ever allowed to step in it. When she died, the house and its possessions were put up for sale by the real estate agency Roseanne's father worked for.

Sadly, no one wanted to buy a witch's house or her possessions, so her father stationed Roseanne to live in the house during the summers (Jennie wondered how they could tell the seasons apart when they lived under the ocean, Youngbae explained that the water changed to a certain color) to keep it in top condition.

While cleaning, she found the screen under a sheet of dust and when she tried to turn it on, it turned pink and the screen switched on to the state it is now: a white pixelated '1 / 4 ?' against the black, and has not changed since. She told her father about it, and he tells her that the screen has not done that since Milky died, and teased Roseanne for being so immersed in keeping the house in shape that she was turning into Milky.

Milky, Jennie keeps the name in mind. Milky. The past possessor of the screen was named Milky. She wonders who the past possessor of the cartridge was before she left it in Suhyun's hands to give to Jennie.

And with a lot of wailing and persuasion, Jennie manages to convince her father to let Youngbae return to Earth with the screen while she dragged Roseanne out to find the missing parts of the console. Of course, Jennie will be sleeping over at Roseanne's house while Ji-Yong finds the third nearest part of the console they can reach near Neoflore.

"Trust me, dad. Trust Roseanne. We seem to be on the same team."  
Ji-Yong mumbles something under his breath but Jennie didn't understand it. "What?"  
"Nothing. I trust you. Please don't get in trouble."  
"Dad, please, don't worry, I won't--"  
"Kwon Jennie, you are the number one target on the EXO hitlist right now, don't you dare say I shouldn't be worried about you."

Roseanne looks at Jennie with a petrified expression. "EXO hitlist?" she mouths at Jennie. Jennie shakes her head and waves Roseanne off, bemused. Roseanne doesn't seem to take it.

"We'll be fine," she slurs, her eyes rolling. "Besides, the PMO are everywhere. I can ask mom for help."  
There is a short silence, then Ji-Yong huffs. "Both planets are the same distance from Neoflore, no connecting flights. Which one do you prefer?"  
"The one with the least EXO influence?" Jennie answers, a 'duh' tone in her voice.  
"Alright."

~~

Roseanne screams.

"I thought your dad said this has the least EXO influence!" she demands.

"I thought so too!" yelps Jennie, both in pain and in fear. Shit, if she's gonna die because someone on the truck they rode to here was a massive snitch...

Behind them, EXOlites -- the EXO security robots -- ran after them with large guns, repeating the words, "Fugitive spotted: Jennie Lee, fugitive spotted: Jennie Lee," over and over again.

As she hears Jennie's name over and over from the robots, Roseanne sucks in a breath and bumps into Jennie, knocking her over. Jennie, in fear, pulls Roseanne by her hair to drag her down with her, and Roseanne lands on right on top of Jennie, onto the long willowy grass.

Jennie is about to demand Roseanne of what she was trying to do, but Roseanne beats her to it. "Play dead," she instructs in a low voice before getting up and facing the robots.

Roseanne sets her jaw, unmoving. Her eyes turn cold.

She opens her mouth, and a deafening inhuman shriek emits from her mouth. It's so loud and piercing it makes Jennie cover her ears and close her eyes, wishing the ground swallowed her whole because of how painful and loud it was.

That was unbelievably painful.

That also was not a human sound.

It sounded like... a siren.

Before she knows it, there is a clatter of metal on metal and Roseanne is running towards the robots. Jennie's eyes widen at Roseanne's act when she realizes that the repetitive robotic reminder that she is a fugitive was no longer heard through out the field. Jennie sits up.

From not far off, Roseanne is on the pile of broken robots trying to pull out one of their firearms from under the pile. She looks towards the risen Jennie then back to the firearm, and Jennie gets up from the ground to help her.

~~

It had turned dark as they walked through the never-ending field in the middle of nowhere. The two girls lugged heavy matching firearms they looted from the collapsed robots. The grass grew taller and taller the further they walked, now reaching past them.

Earlier in their hike Jennie asked Roseanne what that was -- the scream, if that even counted as one. Roseanne snorted before explaining that it was a special skill Neofloreans possessed -- they were sirens, originally, but due to evolution and natural selection, their fishtails would only come about during the springs. In other seasons, they had stalks.

Jennie wondered what Roseanne meant by 'stalks', but Roseanne only motioned to her legs, and they ended up having a xenolinguistic argument over whether 'stalks' was even the right term. Roseanne laughed at the word 'legs'. Jennie sneered at the word 'stalks'.

They've walked so far that when they looked up, they couldn't see the sky anymore. All they saw was the grass swaying in the evening wind. That's when they heard it.

The rustling, like someone was running and following them.

 "Did you hear that?" Jennie whispers.

"Loud and clear," Roseanne answers, loading her gun up to where she thought the sound came from.

Jennie does the same, and the two stand back to back as they tried to figure out where the sound came from, but it never appeared.

Still, they didn't let their guard down. They walked further and further north, when Roseanne realized the grass was... shrinking.

With that, they began to sight a smell a smell that they didn't smell earlier with the scent of the grass plaguing their senses. It was the smell of burning smoke.

Jennie starts running through the field, and she quickly realizes that the grass truly is shrinking because now she can see the source of the smoke -- a barnhouse.

Roseanne looks at Jennie. "Should we go inside?"

"It's worth a shot."

~~

For a pair of girls with guns, they were unbelievably lame to have been beat by a shadow, and now they were tied up to a chair and gagged with white handkerchiefs, a knife threateningly pressed against Jennie's neck.

The girl was blonde, her bangs covering her eyebrows. The rest of her hair falls directly above her shoulders. A black cloth folded in a triangle covered half of her face, the only thing that could be seen was her very large shiny eyes. Jennie wonders if it's possible to fall in love with only a feature of someone's face.

The girl then spoke  -- a different language. Jennie guesses its the planet's native, or at least, her country's native.

Jennie tries to answer, but the gag is preventing her from doing so. Instead, she groans against it, the sound muffled.

The girl glares at her even more. Jennie is conflicted between feeling fear or infatuation for those eyes. She pulls down Jennie's gag. She can feel Roseanne glaring at her.

"Hi," is all Jennie can say.

"Hi..." the girl mumbles to herself, sounding confused, before turning around and walking towards the table shoved against the wall. She puts the knife down and pulls her cloth down to reveal the rest of her face.

Holy cow, she's beautiful, Jennie thinks.

Her lips are so perfectly plump, her face is just the right shape, her eyes are so large and her nose is sharp. Jennie can't help but stare.

Roseanne beside her stares at Jennie's profile, her brows furrowed together in realization that Jennie has a crush on their captor. What kind of Stockholm Syndrome...

The girl squints at them. "Who are you?"

"Hi, the name's Jennie," she says in that certified 'I'm-trying-to-be-cool' voice. Roseanne rolls her eyes. "This is Roseanne."

"Why are you here?" the girl asks again.

"Yeah, we're looking for a girl called Panpriya," Jennie answers, although it sounds more like a question. "She has this controller thing that we need, and I think if you could help us, that'd be great--"

But before Jennie could finish her sentence, the girl has already grabbed her knife from the table and presses it once again to Jennie's neck. "How do you know my birth name?"

Jennie's eyes widen. "You're Panpriya?"

Panpriya doesn't answer. Instead, she pushes the knife even further into the skin of Jennie's neck. "Tell me how you know my real name!"

"Alright, alright!" Jennie yields. "Just put the knife away!"

Panpriya backs up, slightly frustrated, and puts the knife down on the table again. And with that, Jennie begins retelling the story of who she is, how her father -- the king of the Milky Way -- has a tracker of the four parts of a console, that she was looking for them, and how she needs the console and the possessors of the parts with her because it's the only way to defeat the EXO.

"So you see, I have the cartridge," explains Jennie, "while Roseanne over here has the screen. We're hoping you would come with us and bring your controller too."

"But that doesn't explain how you know my birth name," the girl argues.

Jennie opens her mouth to explain that she doesn't know, but Roseanne makes a groaning noise and glares at Jennie. Jennie's eyes widen. "Oh right, can you release my friend too?"

Panpriya doesn't tear her eyes away from Jennie as she pulls down Roseanne's gag. Roseanne gasps for air. "Thank Suraya for the air that we breathe!"

The two others tilt their heads at Roseanne.

"I was praying," Roseanne answers, rolling her eyes, then turns to Panpriya. "Anyway, how long have you had the controller? It might tell us how we know your birth name. What's your new name, by the way?"

"Lalisa," the girl answers curtly. "The king gave it to me."  
"But didn't your king pass away...?" Roseanne inquires innocently.  
Lalisa gives Roseanne a steely gaze in response. Roseanne clamps her lips together.

"He died protecting us from the EXO," Lalisa says, not looking at the two, "they took Bambam and the prince, then killed him."

Jennie tilts her head. "Bambam...?"

"Our leader, the prince's best friend. They took both him and the prince, and we all ran away," Lalisa explains, "I don't know where the others are, I just kept running and running, I couldn't find anyone else."

"How did you end up here?" Jennie asks.

Slowly, as Lalisa speaks, her guard lowers, but she grips the knife even tighter. "It was an ambush from the inside, someone sabotaged us," Lalisa begins, "someone knew that we were moving Prince Nichkhun--"  
Roseanne cuts in with a high voice. "Sorry to interrupt but who is 'we'?"   
"The WZC."  
"Who?"  
"The WZC is a secret organization of teenagers who are undercover as the security detail of Prince Nichkhun-- wait, why am I telling you?" Lalisa jumps at Roseanne and presses the knife to her neck. "You might leave after this and tell on my location! I am not having any snitches, not anymore!"

Roseanne lets out a small shriek. "I'm not a snitch! I'm just genuinely curious! We're gonna have to work together eventually, I wouldn't want you snitching on me either!"  
Lalisa eases her grip against Roseanne's neck when she hears the words 'work together'. "'Work together'...? What do you mean...?"

Jennie sighs, "she means that we might as well tell each other our stories because we're going to be a team once the console is put together. Now if you would continue about the WZC, please."

Lalisa glares at Roseanne, but lets her go to continue the story of the WZC.

"We were all disguised as civilians, students, friends of Prince Nichkhun," she continued, "his closest friend Bambam, he was our leader. I was charading as his cousin when the attack happened. The king was shot in front of a few of us just as we were about to run to tell Bambam and Nichkhun, but they found them. Bambam told us to run, don't go searching for him because he will escape anyway, run and disappear, not to tell any more secrets, he knows who the snitch is, he called her Judas, she was Judas..."

"Who is she?" inquires Roseanne.  
"Not important," Lalisa looks away. "What's important is she's dead. Sorn killed her."  
"Sorn?"  
"From the WZC."

This time it's Jennie who speaks, "and where is this... Sorn now?"  
"I don't know," Lalisa mumbles, looking at the floor. "I've been here for months, alone. I couldn't contact anyone, I don't know where they are. I want to see them so much, to see how they are."  
"But how did you know that Sorn killed Judas?"  
"Because I saw it," Lalisa answered, defensive, "I saw her, the Judas, she was running away towards the EXO, and Sorn tried to get her, and they were talking and I couldn't hear, but Sorn screamed and stabbed her, and Sorn started crying and I was so afraid, Jennie, so afraid, there was so much blood..." Lalisa was crying now. Jennie gasps. Both because Lalisa just said her name for the first time, and because she was having a flashback.

"Oh no," Jennie coos, "oh no, I'm so sorry for asking, I'm so sorry."  
But Lalisa only shakes her head, "no, it's fine. I've been hiding for so long, I needed... I needed..." she sniffles. Jennie and Roseanne give her a sad smile.

Lalisa heaves a large breath and turns back to the table. "I'm guessing you want to see the controller?"

"Yes please," Jennie agrees, "although it would be nice to be untied when I see it."  
Lalisa's guard goes up slightly, "and how will I know you won't steal it?"  
"Because I'm not allowed to," Jennie smiles, "it's yours like how the cartridge is mine. I can show it to you if you like."

Lalisa is convinced because seconds later Roseanne and Jennie are free from their ties and are standing on either side of Lalisa as she rummages through her countless baskets and drawers on the table looking for the controller.

"Here it is," Lalisa declares, gently putting the controller on the table. It's a pink PlayStation controller with  a small screen in the upper middle part of it where the brand logo is supposed to be. Just like the cartridge and screen, the small screen on the controller displays a red pixelated '1 / 4 ?'. At the sight of the number, two beeps simultaneously ring around the room -- one from the controller, and one from the cartridge in Jennie's bag... which isn't with her.

"Uh, Lisa?" Jennie asks, "where's my bag?"  
"My name is not Lisa," Lalisa says, "it's Lalisa."  
"It's a bit too long, don't you think?" Jennie replies. Roseanne hits her on the arm and glares at her. Lalisa rolls her eyes and leaves the table to retrieve Jennie and Roseanne's respective bags hidden in the darkness, right by the wall.

"Here," Lalisa gives them their bags. Jennie wastes no time opening her bag to find the cartridge which now shows an ominous '3 /4 ?' on its side just like the controller's screen.

"How did you get it to do that?" Lalisa marvels at the change in number. "I've been doing all that I can with this thing, it wouldn't budge. It won't even play."  
"Because you had the wrong parts all along," Jennie answers. "How did you even get this?"

Apparently, when she was running out of the castle, one of the soldiers' wives had pulled her aside and gave it to her. "We called her Auntie Won," Lalisa recalls, "she put it in a plastic bag and gave it to me, she said that it would be useful in the future." She shrugs.

"We don't know what it does yet, Lisa, but I can guarantee you," Jennie averts her gaze from Lalisa's eyes to the table where the controller rests, "it can avenge the death of your king."

~~

"Guys," Jennie beams, "meet my mom."

Roseanne and Lalisa bow a full ninety degrees just like how Jennie taught them in the pod over. It was Eustroclid's custom to bow to their elders, especially parents of their peers.

"This is Roseanne, and this one is Lalisa," Jennie motions to them. Chae-Rin smiles at them politely and leads them to the kitchen.

"Do you guys want anything?" Chae-Rin asks, opening the fridge, "we don't have much but I can get Jennie to run down to the store to get some ice cream if you kids want--"

"Ah, no, no, no," both Roseanne and Lalisa decline, waving their hands to signal 'no'. "No, thank you, it's alright."  
"Are you sure?" Chae-Rin looks concerned. The two guests nod.

"Not even lunch? You kids like eggs?"  
"No, it's fine, we aren't really hungry," Roseanne speaks. "Thank you, though." Lalisa just nods, her lips forming into a wide smile that lifts her cheeks up. Jennie's heart beats a little faster.

~~

"Okay, Suhyun, on my mark," Jennie rasps into the communicator. "Shoot!"

There's a large explosion right in front of them, and when the alarms sound, the three girls emerge from the dark corner they hid in, and run through the corridors.

"There's the junction we were talking about earlier," Roseanne shouts from behind Jennie, "you guys know what to do. Lisa, do you have your gun?"

Lalisa nods, pulling her gun out of her belt, cocking it ready to shoot.

"Good," Roseanne says, "here's your turn. Update us if you find Jisoo, alright?"

"Remember she has black hair, a pink collar around her neck," Jennie reminds, "or at least, that's what Suhyun says her tag is."

Lalisa nods again, and when the three reach the junction, Jennie runs straight, Lisa turns right, and Roseanne turns left.

It feels like Jennie has been running in the same place for hours, as the view does not change. There is no noise, there are no soldiers going their way, no security cameras -- no indication that she was progressing through the halls. Shit, she should have brought a watch along.

There is a rattle, some sort of static on her communicator that grows into a sound akin a microphone feedback that startles Jennie into feeling more awake. Someone was messing with them, someone knows they were here. She pulls out her earpiece to ease the pain, halting in her run to analyze what she should do: someone was attempting to sabotage their rescue mission. Should she run back to where the three of them split up, or keep running until she sees some sort of change?

"--ennie? Je--" someone is mumbling into the communicator. "Jenn--"  
"Hello?" Jennie answers, concerned. "Who is there?"

"Unnie," the small voice calls. That was Lalisa. "Unnie, someone is-- Jisoo-- me--"  
"Lisa?" following her instincts, Jennie runs from the way she come from, even faster and taking even longer strides. "Lisa, talk to me, where are you?"

"Junction, unnie," Lisa answers clearly, "soldiers-- Jisoo-- guards-- bullets--"  
"What? Lisa, I can't understand you."

Another voice cuts in, "Jen unnie, I can hear Lisa." Suhyun. "She says she found Jisoo but she's heavily guarded, she doesn't have enough bullets. Someone is following her, she went back to the junction."  
"Shit," Jennie mumbles to herself, "I'm heading back. Wait for me, Lisa."

But before she could make it across, there is a loud and huge explosion before her, throwing her back to where she came from.

Across the newly-formed rift stood Lalisa and another girl with wavy black hair and small lips wearing a pencil skirt. That's going to be difficult. Lalisa's eyes widen in fear when she sees Jennie right across her. "Unnie!"

A small set of guards come down from the break in the ceiling, and Lalisa grabs Jisoo's wrist to make her stand behind the blonde girl. She mumbles something to the dark-haired girl, moving her backwards in the direction of the wall. In a quick flash, the dark-haired girl grabs the gun from Lalisa's hand and aims it at one of the guards, shooting three in a row with one bullet.

With that taken care of, Lalisa lunges at another one of the guards, pushing him over until he goes over the edge and throws him off the high height. More guards try to attack Lalisa, but Jennie shoots at them from where she stands. Shit.

"Suhyun!" Jennie all but shrieks into her communicator, "where are you, we need you to pick us up!"

\--

The girl, who is being nursed in Jennie's living room, introduces herself as Kim Jisoo, and claims to have seen all three of them in a dream, which made her quick to trust the others.

"I don't know what you want from me," Jisoo says, "but I don't think I would be able to give it to you -- I've already lost everything."

Chae-Rin stops in her motions around the girl, "lost everything?"

"I--" the girl starts, huffing a large breath, "I lost my family."

"That makes three of us," Lalisa mumbles under her breath. Roseanne elbows her in the rib before flashing Jisoo a bright grin.   
"What happened?"

"My dad died in the prison. My brother was tortured and escaped, I don't know where he is now, I stayed in the prison alone--"

"What did you say your name was, again?" Jennie stares at Jisoo with furrowed brows.  
"Kim Jisoo."

Jennie turns to her mother, "mom, what was the princess' name again?"  
"Princess?" Chae-Rin looks confused, "there is no princess to VP--"  
"Yes, I know that, but before the EXO came there was a royal family to Eustroclid..." Jennie turns to Jisoo. "Was that your father?"

Jisoo only stares at her, wide-eyed.

Lalisa makes a move to reach out to the scared Jisoo, but Roseanne clamps down her hands and speaks for them instead. Lalisa wrings the hands off her and pulls out her controller from her utility belt and sneers at Roseanne before turning her head to look at the count on the miniature screen. 3 / 4 ?

"We understand if you're afraid to admit things like this especially since we're in a planet controlled by the EXO, but I'm afraid that if you don't own up to it we won't be able to help you."

Jisoo opens her mouth to answer reluctantly when a two simultaneous beeps resounds the room.

Instead of answering directly, Jisoo reaches under her pencil skirt and pulls out a slightly bulky item: a cartridge reader the same shade of pink as Jennie's pink cartridge, Roseanne's pink screen, and Lalisa's pink controller.

"Eh?" Jisoo says in a small voice to the reader. She brings it closer to her eyes, trying to get a good look on it.

"What's wrong?" Jennie asks.   
"Four-four," mumbles Jisoo, like she's been scarred by the sight. Jennie offers her hand out and Jisoo places the reader there, where the inscription '4 / 4' is imprinted on the front of the reader in the same red pixelated font as all the other parts of the console.

The three girls look at each other, then at Jisoo.

"What?"

\--

"There," Lalisa announces with a voice of finality.

The parts of the console were all attached together on the floor of the Jennie's father's castle's control room. "All we need to do is plug it in."

"Or it could already be on," Jisoo mumbles, pointing at Roseanne's screen. The other girls' eyes widen.

The screen is still black, but there is pixelated pink writing on it. 'm o o n s h o t', it says. The four girls come closer to the screen.

'PRESS START' the words appear below the title.

Lalisa crouches down to pick up her controller and presses the 'start' button on it hurriedly.

Four squares appear on the screen, all in four different colors of red, orange, pink, and purple. There is a pixelated explosion on the screen and the four squares have morphed into robots shaped like cats sitting on the bottom of the screen. They suddenly jump and race against each other, and there is a sparkle and the cats suddenly form into one robot.

There is a gasp from behind them. "Moonshot?"

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me if you like! im on tumblr as sq-1.tumblr.com and @asianellenpage on twitter :D


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